125 year anniversary of women winning the right to vote in New Zealand

New Zealand women won the right to vote on 19 September 1893.

125 years on, the Suffrage 125 celebration is an opportunity to remember the suffragists and what they fought for and reflect on women’s rights today – Women, the Vote and Activism

In the late 19th century women suffragists fought for the right to vote, and on 19 September 1893 a new Electoral Act was passed into law. New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world in which all women had the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

Keziah is my great great grandmother, who arrived in New Zealand in 1851, from Turvey, Bedfordshire with her parents and two siblings (a number of immigrants from Turvey settled around Woodend). Rebecca is a great aunt. There’s several Gibbs from Woodend in the database who will also be relations.

Many immigrant women and their families were determined to have a fairer society in their adopted country.

It took over a century, but we have had three female Prime Ministers over the last twenty years.

49 Comments

Alan Wilkinson

Blazer

PartisanZ

Jeez Alan … I never thought to ask that question … or the question: What might the consequences have been of NOT doing it? E.G., women would have remained men’s ‘chattels’ … Perhaps by 1940 such would have been women’s protestations that they would have had to be kept in segregated areas or concentration camps?

But okay, consequences –

1) Women were officially made citizens with equal voting rights … which implies they were recognised more fully as human beings … (for the first time in the history of Christendom – the wonderful Western doctrine which has bought ‘civilization’ to the whole wide world – with its bizarre worship of the Virgin Mary and coincident legacy of oppression of women and everything ‘female’) …

2) The ballot therefore represented potentially the whole adult population rather than half of it

3) Primary caregivers were finally represented in the ballot …

… Oh fuck it I can’t go on …

We should have done an analysis – ‘scientific’ of course – of the consequences of outlawing slavery … It might have been much ‘better’ to keep slavery?

The consequences of introducing human rights legislation … of legislating in favor of private property rights … FFS … Kings, feudal Lords and The Commons might have been much much better?

Kitty Catkin

Women have never been chattels; that is an insulting urban myth that insults both sexes equally. Read some history.

Why has it traditionally been the man’s place to go and work to support his chattel ? It should be the other way around; when did a slave-owner ever work to support the slaves and not the other way around ?

Why did and do men do the hard and dirty work ? Nearly 180 years ago, it was decided that mining was too dangerous for women and ‘youths’ to be involved with it, not, of course, for men to be doing it. My road is being dug up for fibre to be laid; guess who’s doing all the hard, strenous work ?

PartisanZ

“Most American treated married women according to the concept of coverture, a concept inherited from English common law. Under the doctrine of coverture, a woman was legally considered the chattel of her husband, his possession.”

Kitty Catkin

That is a highly emotive and not very accurate way of puttting it, and it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Couverture did not mean that the wife ceased to exist as a person in law.

It ignores marriage settlements where money was settled on the wife before marriage (in the case of a woman who had family money, this was tightly tied up so that the husband could neither ‘kiss it or kick it’ away from her. Property that was legally settled on the wife could not be taken from her. Rich aristocrats were not going to hand over the family fortune to anyone.

I would challenge anyone to find the word chattel used of a wife in reality.At the time, I mean, not written since..

It’s a gross insult to women to assume that they meekly became the property of their husbands; it doesn’t take human nature into account.

Alan Wilkinson

David

Well for a start money would have been allocated and we would have a prostate screening program that doesnt involve any Dr input, there would be a fleet of mammogram type vehicles outside pubs doing a quick xray type thing.
There would have been work done to address the terrible imbalance of workplace deaths where men are copping 93% and its about time women were put in perilous positions and counselling done so they too can encourage their friends to do crazy shit.

Under the pseudonym Fémmina, Mary Ann Müller was fighting for women’s rights before Kate Sheppard even arrived in New Zealand, but her pioneering contribution to the cause is little known. #Suffrage125#Suffragehttps://t.co/GvYrpArPBJ

Kitty Catkin

I am annoyed that Kate Sheppard seems to get almost all the credit, and that the others are largely ignored,

I am also annoyed that she is used and has words and ideas…not attributed, but I can’t think of the word I want…that people say that she would have wanted this and that, when for all we know she wouldn’t have.

Alan Wilkinson

PartisanZ

Alan Wilkinson

Sorry, hadn’t seen that. However it doesn’t say much apart from some seriously OTT speculation which is hardly borne out by comparison with countries like Switzerland who were much slower to give women a vote.

PartisanZ

How would comparison to a landlocked and exceedingly conservative nation in Western Europe, also its banking capital, with an homogenous population, illuminate this thread …?

Does Switzerland’s ‘success’ at remaining extremely conservative, a banking capital, and neutral during WW2 because it suited Allied and Axis nations alike, somehow justify not giving the vote to women?

It’s even an argument against direct rather than deliberative [so-called] ‘democracy’ …

You’ve taken a extraordinarily bizarre position on this thread IMHO Alan, reminiscent of some of the holes you used to dig yourself when I first ‘joined up’ … Put that shovel down now man!

We don’t measure the ‘consequences’ of basic human rights legislation like we do the consequences of an investment on the stock exchange or a business merger …

An analogy might be that this isn’t like ‘the anti-smacking law’ … which, although it extends the rights of children, arguably does have consequences … This is like the fundamental rights of children … as human beings …

Alan Wilkinson

Ranting doesn’t improve you argument, PZ. Eg: “women would have remained men’s ‘chattels’ … Perhaps by 1940 such would have been women’s protestations that they would have had to be kept in segregated areas or concentration camps?”
No such consequence occurred in Switzerland.

If you think it is unreasonable to question the consequences of an event being celebrated you had best review your attitude to Waitangi Day.

PartisanZ

@PG – “Many immigrant women and their families were determined to have a fairer society in their adopted country … It took over a century, but we have had three female Prime Ministers over the last twenty years.”

Yes, women may have been a major force behind the drive for a fairer society … The Fair & Decent Bloc …

And men, as shown on this thread, a major force in blocking it? The Wealth & Power Bloc …

Many immigrant families were determined to have a fairer society in their adopted country.

Nearly two centuries later, do we really have a fairer society?

Alan Wilkinson

High Flying Duck

Is equality not effect enough Alan?
There is plenty of blather about women being “more empathetic” and having different personality biases than men, but in the end there are still Lefties, Righties, Centrists, geniuses and idiots among women as much as men.
Giving women the vote was never going to change the world to any meaningful extent, although there possibly may have been a minor shift in policy positions to meet the needs of the new voter base.
What is did do was give voice to a previously disenfranchised sector of society.

Kitty Catkin

In fact, there were many women who were involved in politics; a wife could make or break a man’s career. From what I read, the vote was often the vote of both man and wife.

It wasn’t until 1918 that there was universal male suffrage in Britain, something that tends to be ignored.

The UK suffragettes were as likely as not to want the vote on the same level as men, i.e., not for all and sundry but for the middle and upper classes.This is also ignored now, as was the urban terrorism of the militants.

Alan Wilkinson

PartisanZ

I don’t think so … You’re enquiry implies that male-only franchise is the ‘norm’ and female franchise should be measured against it …

All you said was “Is there any analysis of what the consequences have been?” …

Your next question to David was much more reasonable, “What examples do you think there are of different outcomes because of women’s vote?”, although this must be tempered by the certain knowledge that for nearly 100 years after obtaining the franchise, women only had male candidates to vote for …

Alan Wilkinson

Surely it is obvious that any comparison of female suffrage with what went before will show up the consequences of male suffrage. The positive impacts of female voting illustrate the negative impacts of male voting and vice versa.

There is no implication of norm except in your mind. Your point about female candidates is valid and pertinent.

A problem with looking up ancestry records is spelling of names. I have just searched birth records for Keziah Norton (great great grandmother) and can find nine children, but her name is spelt six different ways:

Keziah, Kezia, Kesia, Kesiah, Hezia, Eliza

I’m taking the spelling from the suffrage petition as the correct spelling.

Kitty Catkin

I know a woman in her 80s who was the youngest child of a mother who married later than most women…the mother was taken by her mother to the polling booth on the first election day after women’s suffrage was granted. I met the mother who lived to be a great age and planted herself on her daughter who was single and owned a house with two spare bedrooms. Poor M, what a fate.